The family of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker will finally see the return of numerous masterpieces from his collection, some sixty years after they fell into the hands of the Dutch government following the end of World War II. For six decades requests to return them to the rightful owner were ignored, delayed or otherwise frustrated.

It is not the first time that the issue of the ‘brave and heroic’ Dutch and their fight against the Nazi occupier has come up on this blog, a myth that has been dutifully served up as the absolute truth. Painful though the confrontation for the Dutch with their own past is, it is the embarrassment over six decades of myth perpetuation that should provide some food for thought:

Many Jews who returned to Holland after the war confronted similar problems - a fact little recognised in a country proud of the way some citizens stood up for their Jewish compatriots. They were unable to reclaim their homes or the property of family members who died in Nazi concentration camps. 'For a long time there was a tendency to prettify the image of Holland under the Germans, but the image of a country that resisted unanimously has been steadily destroyed by recent research,' said Bas Heijne, a respected political columnist. 'The Goudstikker decision is a sort of closure. It brings both guilt and relief from a belated sense of shame.'

Heijne said the experience of Jews in Holland during the war - only one in 10 survived, one of the highest death rates in Europe, and Dutch police assisted with Nazi-led round-ups - reverberates with the heated debate over immigration in the country today.

The problem is of course that after such a long period most of the key players who prettified the Dutch image and those that were directly involved in denying the Goudstikker family their rights have since died. No one in The Netherlands really cares now it seems, but it is an instructive piece of history that will go a very long way in explaining current Dutch attitudes and (in)action when it comes to dealing with new threats.

NOTE: One small northern European country actually stood up for its Jewish countrymen during WWII. No prizes for guessing which nation that was. Their track record in standing up for freedom continues to this day.